Many of you probably know that I played division 1 volleyball for 4 years. Even before this, sports have played a huge role in my life. It was kind of what I was known for and how I identified myself. It was so simple: who is Tosin? I’m a volleyball player, and before that I was a soccer player. When all of that ended, trying to find the answer to this question stressed me out so much.
The concept of trying to figure out who Tosin was without connecting me to anything physical was such an arbitrary concept. I didn’t just want to be the girlfriend, I didn’t just want to be known for my athletic skills back in college, I needed something more. I wanted to know who I really was, why was I here on this earth, and what impact on the world I should be making. Of course this would stress me out even more to where I became a huge emotional ball of stress going to work, then going to the gym, then going to sleep and waking up and doing it all over again. Yah as you’d imagine, it was kinda hard to be happy and my normal bubbly self at that time.
One day I just decided to try something a little different to liven up my routine and go to a yoga class. When I played volleyball, I found that I loved when we did yoga, but it was more of a recovery and a supplemental regimen to our normal workout routine. So I just decided to try to go to a more intense heated yoga class and see how this felt. I had no clue that this would slowly help me answer the questions that were stressing me the frick out.
So I would keep going to yoga, primarily for a workout, and it continued to intrigue me. It was so different than any other workout I have tried. In yoga, at the beginning of most classes you set an intention. Your intention is meant to help you center on why you mentally came to your mat, it could be because you want to feel powerful, fit, beautiful, etc. It could be because you’re struggling and just need a release or distraction. It could be because you just have a lot of energy and like yoga, literally anything. So each yoga class I went to, I found myself just mentally thinking, “why did I come to this mat?” It took a little while before I could be honest with myself and accept why: because I wanted to feel beautiful and because I needed a way to re-inspire myself (among so many other things). Yoga helped me with both of these. It also gave me time to just breathe. In real adult life you don’t have people telling you to take your time, take a moment to not think, just do nothing. To do nothing is not very “adult” like but it turns out that I really needed this.
So what brought me to yoga? It hooked me because it was so different than any other exercise that I had done before and it has kept me because it helped re-inspire me to figure out who Tosin is again. And while I’m still not 100% sure, I’ve learned to enjoy the journey of exploring, this journey called life. Keep it relaxed homies and enjoy the journey.